Veep announcement [Romney picks Paul Ryan]

[ElvisL1ves]

The younger people have spent larger fractions of their lives and their attentions spans hearing the Republican/Fox lies about Medicare and Social Security being doomed, that they'll never get it, etc. The older folks know better.

[adaher]

They aren't doomed, but the trust funds don't have enough money to pay promised benefits. That's just a fact. Unless you think the Medicare and Social Security trustees are lying.

ANd older people don't know better, unless you mean they know what their self interest is: hold out as long as possible so that their wages won't be taxed more heavily and their benefits won't be reduced.

Simple math says that barring privatization, benefits must go down, taxes must go up, or a combination of the two. Which is the reason young people find privatization attractive.

[ElvisL1ves]

The only reason they're "doomed" is GOP intransigence in performing the necessary maintenance. The adjustments required are pretty small, but ideology requires them to eliminate them entirely, and tell lies about the reasons.

If you never change the oil in your car, it's "doomed", too. If you take a hard stand against changing oil, and yell loudly about the car being inherently doomed, and your kids will never get to drive it because it will be dead in the junkyard by then, then that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can even get your kids to believe it; they don't know any better and they're actually listening to you. But it's all bullshit nonetheless, and in exactly the same way.

[Hentor the Barbarian]

Wow, a poll from june of 2011. That's helpful!

Notice that even back then, it said that people hated Ryan's plan when they actually heard about it.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

The only reason they're "doomed" is GOP intransigence in performing the necessary maintenance. The adjustments required are pretty small, but ideology requires them to eliminate them entirely, and tell lies about the reasons.

There is no GOP intransigence on the issue because there's been no legislative proposal drawn up since 1983. When they block a SS fix, then we can talk. On Medicare, Democrats have produced good proposals to bend the cost curve down, but there's more hope than plan there, and already the cuts are being postponed, calling into question the integrity of the entire process. Entitlements remain on an unsustainable course.

The reason young people are not buying what the Democrats are selling here is because Democrats are portraying themselves as the party of the status quo on entitlements. Even when they've made good changes like many of those in the ACA, they deny that any real cuts have been made, which tells young people that nothing is really being done. And the youth are right. Any real cuts will always be postponed.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by Hentor the Barbarian

Wow, a poll from june of 2011. That's helpful!

Notice that even back then, it said that people hated Ryan's plan when they actually heard about it.

All the best polls on the Ryan plan were from 2011, nothing I can do about that. When better polls come out, those will be more authoritative.

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by adaher

There is no GOP intransigence on the issue because there's been no legislative proposal drawn up since 1983. When they block a SS fix, then we can talk.

Please. The fact that they refuse even to consider the problem does not constitute intransigence to you?

Entitlements remain on an unsustainable course.

Correction: The balance between entitlements and revenue is on a course that will eventually become unsustainable if the necessary maintenance is not performed. Maintenance can be performed on the revenue side, ya know. Why is that not on your list of responsible options?

The reason young people are not buying what the Democrats are selling here is because Democrats are portraying themselves as the party of the status quo on entitlements.

Wrong. The Democrats are for maintaining the guarantees we have come to count upon, and that includes responsibly paying for them.

Even when they've made good changes like many of those in the ACA, they deny that any real cuts have been made

Because they haven't been. Romney is lying.

[ElvisL1ves]

To clarify that last point: ACA takes some cash out of provider reimbursements for Medicare, as one of multiple incentives it has for private providers and private insurance companies to cut bureaucratic bloat and improve efficiencies. It does not cut care availability for its subscribers. Romney's ads, and current GOP rhetoric, do imply that, but that implication is a lie.

[Hentor the Barbarian]

Originally Posted by adaher

All the best polls on the Ryan plan were from 2011, nothing I can do about that. When better polls come out, those will be more authoritative.

Yes, I'm sure you think the "best" polls were the ones done before people learned about what the plan actually was.

[elucidator]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

...You can even get your kids to believe it; they don't know any better and they're actually listening to you...

Wait a minute, you got kids, and they listen to you? Hey, fuck all this political talk, I want to know more about this! Fear? Bribery? Tell me, tell us all, and tell us now!

[adaher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

Please. The fact that they refuse even to consider the problem does not constitute intransigence to you?

The only attempt to consider the problem was the 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security.

Correction: The balance between entitlements and revenue is on a course that will eventually become unsustainable if the necessary maintenance is not performed. Maintenance can be performed on the revenue side, ya know. Why is that not on your list of responsible options?

I'm not going to judge whether revenue increases are responsible for the purposes of this discussion. I'm just going to point out that both revenue increases and benefit cuts are a raw deal for young people. The previous generations got a lot more out of the programs than they put in. Today's young people will get less than they put in. It's simple math and there's no way around it. The Baby Boom generation is just too big for it to work out any other way. The attraction of privatization is that it gives some young people a chance to do better.

Wrong. The Democrats are for maintaining the guarantees we have come to count upon, and that includes responsibly paying for them.

The guarantee was that you would pay in X amount and get out X amount. If you raise the payment but leave the benefit the same, you haven't actually kept the promise.

Because they haven't been. Romney is lying.

That is false.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politic...act_100423.pdf

roviders for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries). Simulations by the Office of the Actuary suggest that roughly 15 percent of Part A providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period as a result of the productivity adjustments.


As much as Democrats try to obscure the issue, if you have a fee for service system, you cannot cut fees without also cutting services. Cut fees, less providers participate, seniors have less access.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

To clarify that last point: ACA takes some cash out of provider reimbursements for Medicare, as one of multiple incentives it has for private providers and private insurance companies to cut bureaucratic bloat and improve efficiencies. It does not cut care availability for its subscribers. Romney's ads, and current GOP rhetoric, do imply that, but that implication is a lie.

There you go again.

Defining truth and then declaring disagreement with it a lie. As the link in my other post shows, 10-15% of providers would become unprofitable. It's true that it's not the Democrats INTENT to cut Medicare benefits, but any efficiency drive will result in a few providers failing to meet the standards and becoming unprofitable, and thus no longer serving Medicare patients.

[ElvisL1ves]

As if their overhead and bloat were beyond their control! As if the least efficient companies should be subsidized by the taxpayers! Come on now.

And that's the only point you have chosen, or more likely been able, to rebut even partially. If you have a substantive argument, then stand and deliver. If not, then sit and think.

[elucidator]

But isn't it an article of conservative faith that the Free Market (Blessings and peace be upon it!) would generate more efficient services and providers? Since your figures suggest that the majority of such providers would continue at a profit (85% or better, according to you). Where is the stern insistence on creative destruction, winnowing out the inefficient laggards, to the greater benefit of all!

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by elucidator

Wait a minute, you got kids, and they listen to you? Hey, fuck all this political talk, I want to know more about this! Fear? Bribery? Tell me, tell us all, and tell us now!

Well, they're old enough to think for themselves, past the automatic-argument, I'll-do-the-opposite-of-whatever-you-say stage. Unlike the current GOP leadership, that is.

Trust me, yours will outgrow it too, someday. They pay more attention to you than you realize.

[jshore]

Originally Posted by adaher

The only attempt to consider the problem was the 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security.

No...For example, it has been pointed out by some Democrats that SS would be solvent out for some unGodly number of years (70? if we can believe such projections) if you just raised the cap on the earnings subject to SS tax from the current value (somewhere around 100K) to 250K.

So, no, you don't have to kill the system in order to save it if your goal is really to save it and not to kill it.

[Try2B Comprehensive]

Wrt to Medicare, working people can take a look at their paychecks and see that the tax for it is quite small. Even a few bucks a week more would translate to a hefty % increase. Talk about raising revenue doesn't have to imply doing it to a collectivist degree- people still take home their pay.

Again, if it is cuts you are after, look at the military first. Americans' lives depend on the continuation of Medicare and Social Security. Do Americans' lives depend on the continuation of every active US military base in the world, for instance? I mean, as for the Nazis or the JIA, it really does appear from my humble and limited viewpoint that we got those guys and they are no longer a threat. Trim (more) bases in Europe and the Pacific. Let the 'freed troops' from those bases become a permanent reduction in the size of the active-duty force. Count the savings (unless your income depends on lobbying Congress to fund overseas projects using 3rd party contractors anchored by active-duty soldiers. If the contractor budget simply cannot be cut, transfer it to domestic projects, like infrastructure and oh gee I dunno, health care)

As for Medicare cuts, a recent article in the New Yorker makes the case that significant gains in efficiency can be made in the medical field through things like standardization of best practices. Better outcomes and smaller bills. Here's the type of points he makes:

“Customization should be five per cent, not ninety-five per cent, of what we do,” he told me. A few years ago, he gathered a group of people from every specialty involved—surgery, anesthesia, nursing, physical therapy—to formulate a single default way of doing knee replacements. They examined every detail, arguing their way through their past experiences and whatever evidence they could find. Essentially, they did what Luz considered the obvious thing to do: they studied what the best people were doing, figured out how to standardize it, and then tried to get everyone to follow suit.
....
Each of our nine knee-replacement surgeons had his preferred type and brand. Knee surgeons are as particular about their implants as professional tennis players are about their racquets. But the hardware is easily the biggest cost of the operation—the average retail price is around eight thousand dollars, and some cost twice that, with no solid evidence of real differences in results.

Warning: the author of the article wants the medical system to operate more like a Cheesecake Factory. Nonetheless it suggests there are more ways to skin this cat than the Republicans' ridiculous monism involving tax cuts for the wealthy coupled with the elimination of entitlements. Capitalism works really well on a problem like Boomer health care: we're going to have to mass-produce a predictable set of services. We can apply efficiency here in lieu of eliminating domestic programs.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

As if their overhead and bloat were beyond their control! As if the least efficient companies should be subsidized by the taxpayers! Come on now.

And that's the only point you have chosen, or more likely been able, to rebut even partially. If you have a substantive argument, then stand and deliver. If not, then sit and think.

Beneficiaries will be affected. THe administration knows it(which is why they keep delaying cuts), and the trustees know it(according to their reports).

But we're supposed to believe that all this easy to fix fraud and waste was just allowed to sit there for 40 YEARS, until Democrats decided to use it to fund a new entitlement. Yeah, that's credible.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by jshore

No...For example, it has been pointed out by some Democrats that SS would be solvent out for some unGodly number of years (70? if we can believe such projections) if you just raised the cap on the earnings subject to SS tax from the current value (somewhere around 100K) to 250K.

Making it a bad deal for those making over $100,000. Fundamentally transforming the system into a welfare program.

[Fear Itself]

Originally Posted by adaher

Making it a bad deal for those making over $100,000.

And the capital gains rate is a bad deal for everyone who works for a living.

What's your point? That government should right all the bad deals, or only those that pinch the wealthy?

[adaher]

Just explaining why young people like privatization. It's the only possible way to get around either raising taxes or cutting benefits. Young people rightly believe that both solutions will fall exclusively on them. And they are right. We've had 30 years to hit the Baby Boomers in the pocket book to fund their own retirements. Now that they are retiring, it's like, "Oh wait, not enough money, we'll have to raise payroll taxes!"

If you're going to raise the payroll cap, we might as well just means test.

[rogerbox]

Originally Posted by adaher

Making it a bad deal for those making over $100,000. Fundamentally transforming the system into a welfare program.

How does the cap being at 100,000 NOT make it not fundamentally a welfare program but the cap being at 250k magically make it so? Secondly, No it would not "FUNDAMENTALLY" change a damn thing, it would change the cap...that's it.

You're an incredibly dishonest debater.

[adaher]

My view is that it would change the nature of the program and that makes me dishonest? Get out of your bubble and see the world as the other side sees it.

Anyway, Social Security as it is now, is a system where what you pay in directly correlates with what you get out. That is a major part of the political viability of the program. Even if you're rich, you get out based on what you pay in. Sever that relationship and that changes the nature of the program. Now rich people pay in many times more than they get out, and we're defining rich not as the top 1%, but more like the top 10%.

Now, what happens to Social Security politically when it's a bad deal for the top 10%?

[rogerbox]

Who cares? The rich are ALREADY trying to naysay the viability of SS and are salivating at the thought of all that money sitting there they can steal, er, I mean "privatize". If they are already doing whatever they can to steal, raising the cap is no added disincentive to the rich, and SS will be even more viable. Win-win for democrats if they grow a pair and defend social security as they should.

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by adaher

I'm not going to judge whether revenue increases are responsible for the purposes of this discussion.

If you're going to claim that service cuts are, then yes, you do have to. The underlying subject here is responsibility. If you're conceding that point, then you're conceding a whole fucking lot else too.

The previous generations got a lot more out of the programs than they put in. Today's young people will get less than they put in. It's simple math and there's no way around it. The Baby Boom generation is just too big for it to work out any other way.

True, the ratio of working persons to retired persons is reducing. That's all the more reason the system needs to be rebalanced. There are countless ways to do that, with raising or eliminating caps, graduating the rates, adding means testing, and so forth, all of them difficult to argue against on any but the most selfish grounds.

The attraction of privatization is that it gives some young people a chance to do better.

As we say around here, "How's that workin' out for ya?" We already have IRA's and 401K's and such for anyone interested in having a private supplement for SS. But SS represents a guarantee, by design, and private investment doesn't.

The guarantee was that you would pay in X amount and get out X amount.

Wrong, if you mean X=X. There is not and never has been such a thing as an SS or MC "account". They have always been transfer payment systems, clearinghouses if you like, with a permanent fund to buffer cash flow variations. Where the fuck do you get the idea that it's been anything other than what you call a "welfare program"? Where?

As much as Democrats try to obscure the issue, if you have a fee for service system, you cannot cut fees without also cutting services. Cut fees, less providers participate, seniors have less access.

What happened to the worst 15% improving their operations to the level of the 85%? How is that not responsible or even possible?

But we're supposed to believe that all this easy to fix fraud and waste was just allowed to sit there for 40 YEARS, until Democrats decided to use it to fund a new entitlement. Yeah, that's credible.

Yes, it's credible to believe a party hasn't found it advantageous to support a tax increase or a service cut before the actual crisis arrives. Yes, it's credible to believe the Democrats are a political party. Are you shocked?

Social Security as it is now, is a system where what you pay in directly correlates with what you get out.

Bullshit. Never has been, isn't now. Bullshit. Again, where the fucking hell did you get that idea?

[elucidator]

At least if our SS were privatized, then our SS fund could have been invested in Lehman Brothers. Rather than just the pension funds of a lucky few!

[adaher]

Originally Posted by rogerbox

Who cares? The rich are ALREADY trying to naysay the viability of SS and are salivating at the thought of all that money sitting there they can steal, er, I mean "privatize". If they are already doing whatever they can to steal, raising the cap is no added disincentive to the rich, and SS will be even more viable. Win-win for democrats if they grow a pair and defend social security as they should.

Which will alienate the young, because even a tax increase on just those making above the cap will hit a pretty significant portion of them. 10-15% of workers make over the cap. Great way to tell the young that if they make it to merely well off, the government will be there to take a larger portion away compared to what previous generations did.

However, Democrats aren't actually suggesting eliminating the cap. The only proposals I've heard would create a huge donut hole between the cap and $250,000. do that, and you don't raise enough revenue and have to cut benefits or raise the payroll tax on all workers.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

Bullshit. Never has been, isn't now. Bullshit. Again, where the fucking hell did you get that idea?

Your benefits are based on an average of your best 20 years of earnings, right? There is a direct correlation between what you pay in and what you get out.

Eliminating the cap creates a different social contract.

[Try2B Comprehensive]

Originally Posted by adaher

My view is that it would change the nature of the program and that makes me dishonest? Get out of your bubble and see the world as the other side sees it.

Anyway, Social Security as it is now, is a system where what you pay in directly correlates with what you get out. That is a major part of the political viability of the program. Even if you're rich, you get out based on what you pay in. Sever that relationship and that changes the nature of the program. Now rich people pay in many times more than they get out, and we're defining rich not as the top 1%, but more like the top 10%.

Now, what happens to Social Security politically when it's a bad deal for the top 10%?

Cite that raising the cap amounts to a 'bad deal for the top 10%" please.

I don't see why things have to be drastic- the fund is scheduled to run dry decades from now. We have the ability to instate incremental changes that extend the viability of Social Security indefinitely. Say the cap rises (with inflation + .3%) per year for 20 years. Say benefits increase (with inflation - .3%) per year for 20 years. I bet that'd help plenty without anyone experiencing much suffering. It's a display example; with all the data one could devise a more accurate proposal.

[adaher]

Originally Posted by Try2B Comprehensive

Cite that raising the cap amounts to a 'bad deal for the top 10%" please.

Cite? Here's my cite: arithmetic. If every worker making over the cap is paying more in, but getting the same out, that's a bad deal.

[Try2B Comprehensive]

Originally Posted by adaher

Cite? Here's my cite: arithmetic. If every worker making over the cap is paying more in, but getting the same out, that's a bad deal.

Except for the part where people with incomes higher than the cap are likely to be financially secure, whereas the people who need Social Security the very most are at risk if it is taken away. Maybe the whole concept overall is too 'socialist' for you, but the people aid the poor and old through government subsidies (and by no means to a collectivist degree either). Circumstances change the math, I am only suggesting adapting to it.

[adaher]

You can get the same result by means testing, except when you means test, the fact that the program's nature has changed is more apparent.

So whereas Warren Buffet got his full benefits, future workers making more than $150,000 or so will simply have to do with less. And you wonder why young people think they are getting the shaft here.

[Fear Itself]

Originally Posted by adaher

So whereas Warren Buffet got his full benefits, future workers making more than $150,000 or so will simply have to do with less. And you wonder why young people think they are getting the shaft here.

Yes, because in the real world, lots of young people make over $150,000. So unfair!

[adaher]

One quarter of voters in 2008 made more than $100,000. That's not a group you want to alienate:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/res...s/#val=USP00p1

Which is why democrats don't actually support just eliminating the cap. They want a donut hole instead, where between the current cap and $250,000 would be exempt from tax.

[Try2B Comprehensive]

Originally Posted by adaher

One quarter of voters in 2008 made more than $100,000. That's not a group you want to alienate:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/res...s/#val=USP00p1

Which is why democrats don't actually support just eliminating the cap. They want a donut hole instead, where between the current cap and $250,000 would be exempt from tax.

I see. A sort of political compromise, and maybe it would work.

I want a solution where the numbers add up- it doesn't have to be my personal idea. There is trouble with the trust fund long-term, but nothing that can't be fixed if we make some simple adjustments now. Incremental changes where nobody 'gets the shaft'. We just don't have to do anything drastic to solve the problem AFAICT.

The Ryan plan OTOH seems to want to end all entitlements based on a forced misunderstanding of the situation in a way that benefits the wealthy, at a time when we are already being taken advantage of by the wealthy. What happens when 97% of the population puts all their labor into the system and gets nothing out? You get something like the French Revolution where the remaining 3% get strung up with piano wire, that's what. I would find that outcome unsatisfactory and believe incremental adjustments to the paperwork would be infinitely less painful.

Anyway I am not so poor that I can't take a vacation. I'm off to climb some mountains and forget about all this stuff for awhile. Please don't think I am stomping away, I am just not going to be online for a few days. Ciao!

[jshore]

Originally Posted by adaher

One quarter of voters in 2008 made more than $100,000. That's not a group you want to alienate:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/res...s/#val=USP00p1

I don't think that shows what you think it shows. The reported income is probably household income. Social security tax is based on the individual employee's (earned) income. My household is making over $100 K but neither of us is even particularly close to that.

[Fear Itself]

Paul Ryan was for government stimulus before he was against it:

In 2002, Republican President George W. Bush proposed a similar — if less ambitious — stimulus plan to the one President Obama signed in 2009. Like Obama, Bush sought to goose the economy through an influx of public sector cash. His stimulus plan included an extension of unemployment benefits and a plan to mail checks directly to millions of Americans. Ryan took to the House floor to defend this plan, accurately noting that additional government spending would help move the economy out of a recession:

We have a lot of laid off workers, and more layoffs are occurring. And we know, as a historical fact, that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, unemployment is going to linger on and on well after that recovery takes place. What we have been trying to do starting in October and into December and now is to try and get people back to work. The things we’re trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested, proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost their jobs. . . .
We’ve got to get the engine of economic growth growing again because we now know, because of recession, we don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security, to fix these issues. We’ve got to get Americans back to work. Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back. That is the constructive answer we’re trying to accomplish here on, yes, a bipartisan basis.

Of course, that was a stimulus plan proposed by a Republican president, not a Democrat.

I am looking for this video to be featured in Obama campaign ads.

[gamerunknown]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

The younger people have spent larger fractions of their lives and their attentions spans hearing the Republican/Fox lies about Medicare and Social Security being doomed, that they'll never get it, etc. The older folks know better.

I don't think the argument can be dismissed so simply (I know I referred to the individuals as callow, but I'll post my reasoning). One way of looking at it is that the prefrontal cortex of individuals is still developing up to around age 25. One of the roles of the prefrontal cortex is balancing short-term rewards with long term goals (in other words, hyperbolic discounting). It may be the case that these individuals would support legislation while younger that'd lower this tax burden giving them more disposable income and they feel they are rational actors capable of weighing actuary costs of not investing in retirement. However, as they get older, they realise they were not as rational as they had assumed and seek to impose the same stringent tax requirements on the other whelps that think they know best. Hell, it could be pure avarice: they wanted to spend as much as possible, realised they didn't put enough away for retirement and then if Social Security is cut, they'd be out on their butts. In these cases, the generational shift towards supporting Social Security remains constant. In the case you mentioned, support for Social Security will eventually phase out once the older generation dies off, in much the same way the US will probably never view racial miscegenation as a serious threat (and it'd be trite to blame this consciousness shift on Star Trek or the liberal media).

Originally Posted by elucidator

Where is the stern insistence on creative destruction, winnowing out the inefficient laggards, to the greater benefit of all!

Always worth pointing out the low administrative costs of the SSA when compared to charities. There are a few differences in homology to take into account: marginal utility, in that there will probably be a greater outlay on administrative costs when dealing with smaller funding in the first place and also the subsumption of some costs into the IRS, but another major factor is that executive remuneration is not as large in the public as it is in the private sector (or secretarial pay, if you wish).

[rogerbox]

I can guarantee you young people are not by and large wanting to opt out of SS because they want more money to party. I absolutely guarantee you if you polled young people who would opt out of SS if they could, that well over the majority want to opt out, because they don't want to pay for old people NOW who are robbing my generation with their unpaid wars etc.

I am as liberal as they come, and if I could opt out of SS I probably would...not because I don't believe in the program, but because I don't trust Democrats to actually fight back against the evil republicans who can't STAND any social safety nets. I literally don't believe in 38 years when I turn 65 that SS will be worth a damn because Democrats are willing to even negotiate SS benefits, which should be completely off of the table.

You old are all robbing from your children and grandchildren and should be ashamed of yourselves, you're selfish and short sighted.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by rogerbox

I can guarantee you young people are not by and large wanting to opt out of SS because they want more money to party. I absolutely guarantee you if you polled young people who would opt out of SS if they could, that well over the majority want to opt out, because they don't want to pay for old people NOW who are robbing my generation with their unpaid wars etc.

I am as liberal as they come, and if I could opt out of SS I probably would...not because I don't believe in the program, but because I don't trust Democrats to actually fight back against the evil republicans who can't STAND any social safety nets. I literally don't believe in 38 years when I turn 65 that SS will be worth a damn because Democrats are willing to even negotiate SS benefits, which should be completely off of the table.

You old are all robbing from your children and grandchildren and should be ashamed of yourselves, you're selfish and short sighted.

Chill, Rog. In the long run, I think we will prevail--whether they like or not (not), the Republicans are declining, demographically and every which way--over the long run, we just get more and more socially aware (which is what they're bitching about) and they bitch loudest when their backs are up against the wall, as now. Notice you rarely hear actual opposition to social welfare items like Medicare and Social Security nowadays. When I was your age, in the 60s and 70s, I actually heard pols like Goldwater and Reagan express their mistrust for the very concept of assisting the elderly and the sick, they wanted it all to be done by churches, local charities, families. Now that's pure wingnut-talk, and I believe it's fading out. You still hear it, true, but it's only talk--they don't actually believe it, they just say it to get the wingnut vote, but even conservative Republicans know that SS and Medicare are here to stay.

Of course, it affects you materially in a way it doesn't affect me, so I get how you're pissed.

[jasg]

Originally Posted by adaher

<snip>

Anyway, Social Security as it is now, is a system where what you pay in directly correlates with what you get out. That is a major part of the political viability of the program. Even if you're rich, you get out based on what you pay in. Sever that relationship and that changes the nature of the program. Now rich people pay in many times more than they get out, and we're defining rich not as the top 1%, but more like the top 10%.

Now, what happens to Social Security politically when it's a bad deal for the top 10%?

I don't understand this 'directly correlates' comment - can you please explain?

My reading of the SSA.GOV site shows that 'what you get out' (the PIA, Primary Insurance Amount calculation) is progressive - it has a maximum benefit of less than $2500/month. Benefits do not increase directly with what you earn and pay in taxes - they are capped.

Originally Posted by SSA.GOV

For example, a person who had maximum-taxable earnings in each year since age 22, and who retires at age 62 in 2012, would have an AIME equal to $8,199. Based on this AIME amount and the bend points $767 and $4,624, the PIA would equal $2,460.70. This person would receive a reduced benefit based on the $2,460.70 PIA. The first COLA this individual could receive is the one effective for December 2012. See the monthly benefit amount for this example and other examples with maximum-taxable earnings.

I also do not believe that 'rich people pay in many times more than they get out'. Do you have a cite for that?

This example * shows that a theoretical 'rich guy' might have contributed $115,000 over 30 years. At $2460/month, it takes only 47 months for benefits to exceed contributions. Add in the employer contributions of $115,000 and you get another 47 months.

So, after a bit less than 8 years, the 'rich guy' will collect more in benefits than taxes.

* My cite also goes on to discuss the alternative investment return of SS taxes, but that is another debate entirely and should be ignored in the context of this discussion.

[jasg]

Originally Posted by adaher

Cite? Here's my cite: arithmetic. If every worker making over the cap is paying more in, but getting the same out, that's a bad deal.

Huh?

If you make more than the cap, you stop paying in - not paying more in. That is why it is called a cap...